The Ninth Man (9 page)

In short: Be still, my beating heart!

We extricated the bags from the car, and I followed him out of the garage and up a flight of stairs into the long courtyard. Apartment D proved to be on the ground floor, and the complex a series of unconnected buildings joined by a suspended walkway at the second-floor level. It would be relatively easy to come and go on the ground level without being seen.

Once inside the apartment, Miller flicked on the lights. I followed him into the kitchen, where we deposited the grocery bags on a cobalt-blue ceramic counter. He rummaged quickly through the bags, took out a few perishable things and popped them into the freezer.

“I can put the rest of this stuff away later. Come on into the living room and sit down.”

The living room was everything Rholfing’s was not. The key to Miller’s lifestyle was apparently quiet masculinity and innate good taste. The walls were hung with paintings I’d have given an arm for—one, in particular, a nude male study in browns and beiges.

“Alan did that,” Miller said, noting my interest. I didn’t have to ask who the model had been. “That…” He indicated a portrait of a rather brooding young man as dark as Miller was fair. “…is Alan. I should get rid of it but somehow just can’t bring myself to do it. Alan was very talented. Can I get you a drink? Please sit.”

I settled onto the chocolate brown corduroy sofa.

“A drink would be fine. Bourbon and water or bourbon and Seven, if you have it.” Normally, I switched between Old Fashioneds and Manhattans, but I didn’t want to put him to the trouble.

“Sure thing,” he said, moving to a small wet bar in the dining area just off the living room. “I’m a Manhattan man, myself.”

I decided it was too late to change my request, so I said nothing.

While he made the drinks and took a short side trip to the kitchen for ice, I took in the rest of the apartment within eye range. It was the kind of place I wished I lived in. You know how it is—you’re perfectly happy with your own place, but then you see one of those furnished model homes, and…

“If it’s too weak, let me know.”

I looked from the full glass about a foot in front of my face to a strong, tanned hand, along a beautifully muscled arm carpeted with tiny golden hairs to a biceps-hugging T-shirt, across a wide expanse of chest over a wisp of chest hair curling over the neck of the shirt, up a bronze-pillar neck and over a matinee-idol chin (cleft included), into a face that was just too fucking beautiful for any one human being to have.

He smiled, as if at some private joke.

“I have that effect on some people,” he said, obviously reading my mind. But he was still smiling, and I knew he wasn’t being vain—just truthful.

“Sorry,” I said, blushing furiously, I’m sure.

“Hey, don’t be,” he said, sitting halfway down the sofa from me. “My face, as they say, is my fortune. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a gift from my parents. But without it I’d have to get an honest job.”

The silence while we sipped our drinks was broken only by the clink of ice against glass, and when I looked again at Miller, he was staring at me, no longer smiling.

“Now, what about Alan?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” I admitted. “I’m working on a case that really doesn’t involve Mr. Rogers—”

“Alan,” he corrected.

“Alan directly. But I felt he might know some people I’m trying to locate. Now that he’s…uh…dead, I thought perhaps you might be able to help me. How long had you and Alan been together?”

Miller sighed deeply, took another drink from his Manhattan, and laid his free arm along the back of the sofa. His fingers were disturbingly close to my shoulder.

“Only about eighteen months,” he said. “Alan was my first lover—can you imagine that? I’m thirty-two years old, and Alan was my very first relationship.”

I resisted the temptation to speculate as to why, and I needn’t have bothered, because he went right on talking.

“This probably sounds like bullshit,” he said, looking directly at me, “but it ain’t easy being beautiful.” He gave a quick half-smile, but his eyes were serious…and sad. “I was married at nineteen, had two kids, hated every minute of it. I came out when I was twenty-two and started modeling. When I found out there were other guys who liked guys, I became a number-one whore—and I could have just about anybody I set my sights on.

“Then, about two years ago, I was sitting at home one night getting ready to go out, and I started thinking about all the guys I’d been with, and I realized I couldn’t remember a single thing about any of them. They were all one big blur. I knew then that it was about time for me to settle down. Do you have a lover?”

“Nope. Not at the moment.”

He nodded as though I’d proved his point.

“Then you probably know that wanting a lover and finding a lover are two different things.”

We each took another sip from our drinks. I was uncomfortably aware of Miller’s hand just inches away. It wasn’t that I thought he was coming on to me. It was that I rather wished he were.

“Then I met Alan. He was bright, and talented, and charming, and I said, ‘Aha! This is what I’ve been looking for.’ We courted, just like the squarest of square straight couples. I did everything but formally propose.

“What I didn’t know, and didn’t find out until much later when I suddenly came down with a case of the clap after being faithfully and happily married to Alan for six months, was that monogamy wasn’t part of his vocabulary. Alan was something of a male nymphomaniac—a satyr, I think they’re called. If you had a dick, you qualified.”

He drained his glass and got up from the couch in one quick motion.

“Like a refill?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” I said. “This one’s fine.”

He continued talking as he made himself another Manhattan.

“You can imagine what that did to the old ego, finding out your one true love is everybody else’s not-so-one, not-so-true love. Fucking egos!”

He came back into the living room and sat down beside me, much closer this time. I was becoming very warm.

“It happens,” he said, letting his arm drop into the small space between us. “But it doesn’t happen to me! I’ve been spoiled rotten all my life just because I’ve got a nice-looking face and a halfway decent body.”

Now, there
, I thought,
was the understatement of the century
.

“Do you know what?” He turned to face me full-on. “When I found Alan dead—just lying there in bed like he was asleep, except Alan never slept on his back—I was sure somebody had killed him. But there was no blood, no mess, no sign of a struggle, nothing out of place. Just Alan, dead in bed.

“The police asked me all sorts of questions and said they’d get back to me. They never did. When I tried to find out what was going on, no one could—or would—tell me anything. But I kept after them, and finally, somebody told me—off the record—that he’d committed suicide. He’d taken some kind of poison.

“And you accepted that?”

“It wasn’t really that much of a surprise, if you knew Alan.”

“Had he ever threatened suicide?”

Miller sighed again and took a sip of his drink before answering.

“Only two or three times a week. Alan was a temperamental artist—aren’t they all?—and a spoiled brat. Every time we had a fight, he’d threaten to kill himself just to make me feel guilty. He was very good about laying on guilt.

“But we hadn’t had a fight in days. I just can’t figure it out. I still don’t know where he got whatever it was that killed him. He didn’t use drugs, and I don’t think there was anything in the medicine cabinet that could be considered lethal. It wasn’t as though he drank a glass of Drano—I gather that’s a pretty messy way to die, and Alan would never have chosen a messy way to die.”

He looked at me closely.

“And now you show up, asking question. These other people you mentioned—who are they, and what do they have to do with Alan, exactly?”

I drank before answering.

“I don’t know for sure that they have anything to do with him,” I said, feeling certain I was lying and hating myself for it. “Alan’s name was just one of several, and I’m trying to find out if there’s any link at all between them, and if so, what it was.”

Miller set his glass on the coffee table and sat back.

“Okay, so run them past me. If Alan knew them, there’s a possibility I might have, too—unless they were tricks of his. He was thoughtful enough not to rub my nose in them.”

“Gene Harriman.” I watched his face for any reaction. There was none.

“Nothing.”

“Arthur Granger.”

“Nope.”

“Clete Barker.”

“Sorry.”

“Arnold Klein.”

“Bobby McDermott.”

He shook his head.

“Not doing too well, am I?” he said, apologetic.

“Don’t worry about it.” Alan Rogers had been the first victim; just like the others, the police hadn’t gotten back to Miller after the other bodies were discovered.

“Any more?” he asked.

“That’s it. Back to the old drawing board, I guess.” I drained my glass down to the ice cubes, and when he pointed to it and raised an eyebrow, I shook my head.

“No, thanks.”

He looked disappointed, and I mentally kicked myself for passing up an opportunity to stay longer. I try never to mix business with pleasure, but I’m not a fanatic about it, and in Gary Miller’s case…

“Was there anything at all out of the ordinary about the house that day—and especially the bedroom?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Not a thing. The maid had been in the day before, and she always leaves the place spotless. It usually took us a couple of days to mess it up again.”

“So nothing unusual?”

“Afraid not. Except for the phone number.”

“What phone number was that?”

“Behind the nightstand, on the floor. I dropped my keys, and when I bent to look for them, I saw it. I have no idea of how it got there, unless it fell out of his wallet on the day he died. It couldn’t have been there the day before or the maid would have found it and picked it up.

“It wasn’t like Alan to collect phone numbers—as I said, he tried not to rub my nose in his little adventures. Right after I came down with the clap, I laid down the law to him. I told him if I ever caught him tricking on me, I’d break both his arms and kick his ass out on the street. I’m sure it didn’t slow him down, but it made him very discreet.”

“Did you keep the phone number?”

“Yeah,” he said, hoisting his well-rounded buns off the sofa to reach into his back pocket for his wallet. He thumbed through it for a minute then came up with a folded piece of paper—a piece of bar napkin, it appeared. He handed it to me, and I opened it to read:
Ed. 555-7897
.

“Did you ever call it?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. I was tempted, but what good would it do? I don’t even know why I kept it. Must be my masochistic side.”

I refolded the paper, having—I hoped—memorized the number, and handed it back to him.

He waved it away.

“Keep it,” he said, and I slipped it into my pocket without comment.

“Did Alan keep a photo album?” I asked.

“Not that I know of. He always looked down on photographs and photographers—which I always found kind of ironic, considering my line of work. To Alan, painting was the only valid form of artistic expression.”

We sat silently for a minute or so, and I was again awkwardly aware of his nearness—and that his eyes were on me.

“Well,” I said, getting up quickly, “I really appreciate your help, but I’ve taken up enough of your time, Mr. Miller.”

“Gary,” he said, getting up and taking my extended hand.

Now, there are handshakes, and there are handshakes, and this was a
handshake
! I looked up and met his intense blue eyes staring into mine.

“Maybe we could get together again sometime socially,” he said. “After Alan has gone a little further toward the back of my mind.”

“I’d like that,” I said, and this time I definitely wasn’t lying.

Chapter 5

I slept right through the alarm, which I’d set deliberately
for a change, and didn’t get out of bed until nearly eight-thirty. Pissed at myself though I was, a long shower and about a half-gallon of Murine put me back in fairly good shape; by the time I’d shaved and gotten dressed, I was feeling downright chipper.

I made it to the office just before nine, checked with my service, looked through the mail, and seriously considered buying a new air conditioner. Maybe when this case was over, I could afford one—a nice little window unit I could take with me whenever they decided to tear down the building, an action already about thirty years overdue.

Reluctantly, I forced myself out of my dream world back into reality. Aside from possible future social benefits, my visit to Gary Miller had produced the first tangible…
please, God
…clue in the case—the phone number. Granted, it wasn’t much, but it was all I had.

I started to look for the folded paper I’d stuck in my pocket and cursed myself when I remembered it was still in the shirt I’d worn yesterday, which was hanging on the bedroom doorknob at home.
Stu-pid, Hardesty! Stu-pid!

Ed. That much I remembered. And the 555 prefix. But was it 7897? Or 7987? Yeah—7897. I hoped.

Chances were nobody would be home, but I had to give it a shot. I picked up the phone and dialed. On the second ring there was the familiar click of an answering machine and a voice, warm and masculine, said, “Hello, this is Ed Grayley.”

Bingo!

“I’m not able to make it to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number at the tone, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

A three-second silence was followed by a mellow chime rather than the usual irritating metallic beep.

“My name is Dick Hardesty. I’m a private investigator, and I hope you might be able to give me some information in a case I’m working on. It won’t take but a minute of your time, so if you could call me I’d appreciate it.” I gave him my number then said, “Thanks,” and hung up.

So much for that. I returned a couple of calls left with my service, made an appointment for a haircut, and then decided to go down to Hughie’s on the off-chance of running into Tessie, the guy Bud the bartender had told me might know some more about Bobby McDermott.